How did we get here? Why does it appear that we’re on the brink of a war in Asia, one that could involve nuclear weapons? North Korea has had nuclear-weapons capacity for at least 10 years now. Have its recent advances been so dramatic and significant to force the United States to wage a preventive war? No. The crisis we now find ourselves in has been exaggerated and mishandled by the Trump administration to a degree that is deeply worrying and dangerous.

In Washington, there is a conventional wisdom on North Korea that spans both parties and much of elite opinion. It goes roughly like this: North Korea is the world’s most bizarre country, run by a crackpot dictator with a strange haircut. He is unpredictable and irrational and cannot be negotiated with. Eventually this weird and cruel regime will collapse. Meanwhile, the only solution is more and more pressure. But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong?

The ransomware WannaCry, which requests a payment in the Bitcoin digital currency to regain access to computers, has hit computers of the National Health Service in the UK, large companies in France and Spain, the largest rail network in Germany, government offices in Russia and universities in China and Taiwan, amongst others.

The recent Republican debacle on health care could prove to be an opportunity. It highlighted, yet again, the complexity of America’s system, which continues to be by far the most expensive and inefficient in the advanced world.

We do not yet have the official agenda for next month’s meeting at Mar-a-Lago between Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. But after 75 years of American leadership on the world stage, we might be watching the beginning of a handover of power from the United States to China.

Last Friday, President-elect Donald Trump irritated China by having a direct phone conversation with Taiwan’s President. Under the One-China-Policy, Taiwan is not officially a state (the UN doesn’t recognize Taiwan as an independent country), although in reality the island benefits from a certain political status quo and the Military protection from the US.